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Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#41

Post by DoreenMichele »

sz4kerto wrote: post #4

It would be really-really important to use pre-registration especially in socially sensitive studies like this one. It is possible that these numbers are artifacts even if the stated p value is low. I'm not saying that the study is wrong, just that shocking results like this one need extreme methodological rigor behind them before we start telling everyone that white doctors are killing black babies etc. https://en.m…

just that shocking results like this

This is not shocking. It's well known that Blacks don't live as long as Whites in the US and have generally poorer outcomes for all metrics -- health, economic status, etc. That's old news and common knowledge.

It's also old news and common knowledge that the difference is quite substantial. It's not a small difference at all.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#42

Post by [deleted] »

croissants wrote: post #19

If you're interested in the raw data behind these conclusions, it looks like the paper supplement [1] has some. One potentially meaningful point from Table S1A of the supplement: it looks like there are 360k white doctor-black patient observations and 97k black doctor-black patient observations, and the mean length of stay for white doctor-black patient observations is 4.73 days vs. 3.37 days for black doctor-black p…

[deleted]

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#43

Post by iagovar »

vharuck wrote: post #37
iagovar wrote: post #18

> The root, she says, lies in structural racism. Another HNr deleted his comment, but this needs more substance before thrown around. When I was studying sociology I noticed this trend of finding some general stat and the author follows with statements such as is systemic xism. Most of the times it comes as intellectually weak. Why not researching further, before typing such gross statement. Often it is a non sequitu…

I somewhat agree, but for maybe a different reason. I think racism probably is a major root cause, but think it's intellectually lazy because identifying it doesn't help much. Racial disparities exist in virtually every important measure of health (and I only say "virtually" because I don't know them all off the top of my head). Genetics plays a part in some, but the root cause of many is the current or lingering eff…

Actionable public policy is difficult and requires to think stuff twice, measure results and to be practical. Even for general guidelines (unless you just want to dump money around).

I can tell you about public policy that mentions no racism that would change the life of poor black people in the US, allowing them to capitalize themselves easier, and have a better life.

It probably wouldn't be the most trendy, but it works.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#44

Post by AzzieElbab »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #39
sz4kerto wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure. Psychology and sociology has such a horrible track record when it comes to reproducibility of studies that have some kind of political significance that we just have to be careful. In case of these topics, there's a relatively strong publication pressure here. Also: the raw data is unfortunately not enough without pre-registration. (For obvious reasons.) "bad faith" is absolutely required in science. Es…

I'm not sure there is a crisis of reproducibility in a study like this. We can tell with accuracy what the race of the physician is, the race of the baby and whether or not the baby dies or not.

We also can’t tell what is the death rate of all babies delivered by black doctors from this study

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#45

Post by 0-_-0 »

polishdude20 wrote: post #13

Just speculating here but could it be that, in neighborhoods where a black person is more likely to become a doctor, those neighborhoods have a better healthcare system in place? The cities/neighborhoods with higher black poverty probably have less black doctors in general.

To put your idea differently: The study might be showing that places where a greater ratio of Blacks become doctors have better health outcomes.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#46

Post by croissants »

uniqueid wrote: post #31

I wonder if anyone has conducted a study on how many internet comments on articles alleging bias are variations of 'now hang on a second, there may be an innocent explanation here'.

Eh. It's not like the internet has a shortage of people happy to read a study's editorialized conclusion on Twitter, take it as truth, and go on with their day. A little critical thinking --- and this means going beyond "I don't like this, so I'll say correlation does not imply causation and move on to something else" --- seems fine if you're trying to do it honestly and carefully?

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#47

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

AzzieElbab wrote: post #44
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure there is a crisis of reproducibility in a study like this. We can tell with accuracy what the race of the physician is, the race of the baby and whether or not the baby dies or not.

We also can’t tell what is the death rate of all babies delivered by black doctors from this study

What does that have to do with anything?

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#48

Post by nomdep »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #41
sz4kerto wrote: post #4

It would be really-really important to use pre-registration especially in socially sensitive studies like this one. It is possible that these numbers are artifacts even if the stated p value is low. I'm not saying that the study is wrong, just that shocking results like this one need extreme methodological rigor behind them before we start telling everyone that white doctors are killing black babies etc. https://en.m…

just that shocking results like this This is not shocking. It's well known that Blacks don't live as long as Whites in the US and have generally poorer outcomes for all metrics -- health, economic status, etc. That's old news and common knowledge. It's also old news and common knowledge that the difference is quite substantial. It's not a small difference at all.

Because more blacks are poor, not (directly) because the color of their skin.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#49

Post by snayan »

uniqueid wrote: post #31

I wonder if anyone has conducted a study on how many internet comments on articles alleging bias are variations of 'now hang on a second, there may be an innocent explanation here'.

Right? While I think it's important to have open dialogue and discussion in society, the comments here are making me sad. Based on everything we know about American society, the claims this study makes don't seem terribly outlandish, but lord some people really want to refute it.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#50

Post by DoreenMichele »

nomdep wrote: post #48
DoreenMichele wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just that shocking results like this This is not shocking. It's well known that Blacks don't live as long as Whites in the US and have generally poorer outcomes for all metrics -- health, economic status, etc. That's old news and common knowledge. It's also old news and common knowledge that the difference is quite substantial. It's not a small difference at all.

Because more blacks are poor, not (directly) because the color of their skin.

And how is it 'more blacks are poor' persistently across the nation for hundreds of years having nothing to do with the color of their skin?

Blacks are last hired, first fired.

There is a history of laws being written to explicitly and intentionally exclude them and not all those laws have been expunged from the books.

Redlining and similar practices are well documented.

I don't know how anyone can suggest that poverty is the root cause of poor outcomes for Blacks and is wholly unrelated to their skin color and deny that skin color has any connection as a root cause when we know for a fact it does. We know for a fact that there is a long history in this country of Blacks being actively and intentionally denied access to the same things as Whites in this country because of the color of their skin.

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